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Urban History Review Revue d'histoire urbaine

White-Collar Workers and Neighbourhood Change: in , 1880–1920 Nicholas Lombardo

Volume 43, Number 1, Fall 2014 Article abstract In 1880, Jarvis Street, just east of Toronto’s central business district, was the URI: https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1030804ar city’s premier residential district, home to notable Torontonians such as the DOI: https://doi.org/10.7202/1030804ar Masseys and the Gooderhams. By 1920, the street would host a new group of young, unattached, white-collar workers. Changes to the social, demographic, See table of contents and occupational character of Jarvis Street were accompanied by physical changes to its built form. The family estates of the nineteenth-century elite were converted into boarding and rooming houses, or torn down and replaced Publisher(s) by some of the city’s first apartment buildings. These changes were driven by the growth of corporate capitalism in Toronto and the attendant growth of Urban History Review / Revue d'histoire urbaine white-collar workers, as well as changes to urban form associated with the growth of the city outwards. This article examines the relationship between ISSN neighbourhood change and larger socio-economic changes occurring across the North American urban landscape at the time. It does so by using a variety 0703-0428 (print) of historical data, including City of Toronto tax assessments, city directories, as 1918-5138 (digital) well as contemporary newspaper accounts. This case study of Jarvis Street’s social, gender, occupational, and physical changes shows the way that larger Explore this journal socio-economic processes are written at the scale of the neighbourhood. In doing so, it demonstrates the importance of understanding neighbourhood change as local materialization of larger social, economic, and demographic Cite this article processes. Lombardo, N. (2014). White-Collar Workers and Neighbourhood Change: Jarvis Street in Toronto, 1880–1920. Urban History Review / Revue d'histoire urbaine, 43(1), 5–19. https://doi.org/10.7202/1030804ar

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This article is disseminated and preserved by Érudit. Érudit is a non-profit inter-university consortium of the Université de Montréal, Université Laval, and the Université du Québec à Montréal. Its mission is to promote and disseminate research. https://www.erudit.org/en/ White-Collar Workers and Neighbourhood Change: Jarvis Street in Toronto, 1880–1920

Nicholas Lombardo

In 1880, Jarvis Street, just east of Toronto’s central business dis- Amérique du Nord à l’époque. Il le fait en utilisant des données trict, was the city’s premier residential district, home to notable historiques variées, dont les registres d’impôts de la ville de Torontonians such as the Masseys and the Gooderhams. By 1920, Toronto, les annuaires de ville, ainsi que des articles de journaux the street would host a new group of young, unattached, white- contemporains. Cette étude de cas des changements sociétaux et au collar workers. Changes to the social, demographic, and occupa- niveau du genre, du travail et de la forme physique de la rue Jarvis tional character of Jarvis Street were accompanied by physical démontre la façon dont les processus socio-économiques plus larges changes to its built form. The family estates of the nineteenth- s’inscrivent à l’échelle du quartier. Ce faisant, elle démontre century elite were converted into boarding and rooming houses, l’importance de comprendre l’évolution des quartiers comme or torn down and replaced by some of the city’s first apartment matérialisation locale des processus sociaux, économiques et buildings. These changes were driven by the growth of corporate démographiques. capitalism in Toronto and the attendant growth of white-collar workers, as well as changes to urban form associated with the growth of the city outwards. This article examines the relation- Introduction ship between neighbourhood change and larger socio-economic The process of neighbourhood transformation in North American cities has long been a subject of enquiry in urban changes occurring across the North American urban landscape at history, and the concepts of changing ethnic composition in the time. It does so by using a variety of historical data, including immigrant neighbourhoods or gentrification in older areas are City of Toronto tax assessments, city directories, as well as con- good examples of the topic’s breadth. Jarvis Street, in Toronto’s temporary newspaper accounts. This case study of Jarvis Street’s downtown core, presents an ideal case study of the multi- social, gender, occupational, and physical changes shows the way faceted processes that constitute neighbourhood change. A that larger socio-economic processes are written at the scale of the neighbourhood can be loosely constructed as the collection of neighbourhood. In doing so, it demonstrates the importance of practices, from class and social status, land use, built-form to understanding neighbourhood change as local materialization of family composition, which function within a space at a local- larger social, economic, and demographic processes. ized scale. Neighbourhood change is larger than the sum of its parts. It is the result of particular changes occurring in relation En 1880, Jarvis Street, juste à l’est du quartier des affaires de to one another as well as to larger external forces. The way in Toronto, était le quartier résidentiel de l’élite de la ville, accueil- which the practices that make up class and social status, land lant plusieurs Torontois notables comme les familles Massey et use, built-form, family composition and tenancy are transformed Gooderham. En 1920, on y trouvait un nouveau groupe de jeunes manifest themselves jointly as neighbourhood change. While cols blancs indépendants. Ces changements à caractère social, these components are each individually related to changes démographique et professionnel ont été accompagnés par des wrought by capitalism, they are also all intrinsically related to changements physiques à la forme construite de la rue Jarvis. Les one another, on Jarvis Street. résidences familiales de l’élite du XIXe siècle ont été converties en This article seeks to understand Jarvis Street’s transformation pensions et en maisons de chambres, ou démolies et remplacées par from elite area to boarding- and rooming-house district by ask- quelques-uns des premiers immeubles d’habitation de la ville. Ces ing, what was the relationship between the large-scale econom- changements ont été motivés par le développement du capitalisme ic and social shifts occurring in North American cities between corporatif à Toronto et la croissance concomitante des cols blancs, 1880 and 1920, and those small-scale changes to class com- ainsi que par les modifications à la forme urbaine associées à la position, family status, and land use on Jarvis Street? From the croissance de la ville vers l’extérieur. Cet article examine la beginning of the 1880s, changes to the employment structure of relation entre le changement au niveau du quartier et les change- urban North America led to a de-skilling and massive prolifera- ments socio-économiques survenus dans le paysage urbain en tion of white-collar jobs. At the same time, Toronto’s central

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Figure 1: Jarvis Street, south from Carlton. Source: City of Toronto Archives, 1885–95, item 12, fonds 1478.

business district (CBD) expanded in all directions as corporate the Gooderhams, the largest producers of spirits in Canada, headquarters and related services drove the construction of lined Toronto’s “superb avenue one mile and quarter long.”1 purpose-built office buildings. Jarvis Street, on the eastern edge Jarvis Street’s reputation in the 1880s was related to a class and of the CBD, at the same time, saw a demographic shift. As the social composition that was reflected in the elite streetscape. elites who inhabited the street’s stately single-family homes died, Real estate advertisements for the subdivision of lots on Jarvis their children, seeking increasingly homogeneous residential Street proclaimed, “The property needs no description to the spaces, began to abandon the street for outlying districts. The citizens of Toronto,”2 while a notice in the Globe called Jarvis large, single-family homes that the elites left behind could be “the most fashionable residential street in Toronto.”3 Walking subdivided or redeveloped easily and made profitable because north from East at the time, a pedestrian would they were close to the CBD. The buildings made attractive have encountered some of the first paved sidewalks in the city, homes to the young, single, and newly urbanized corporate abutting iron gates outside of elite estates (see figure 1). As one workers who flocked to Toronto. I argue that the rise of corpo- approached East on the street’s northern end, the rate capitalism, the attendant explosion of white-collar labour, built landscape grew grander in scale and social status. This and changing urban spatial residential patterns coincided with residential streetscape was interspersed with the institutions demographic changes to transform Jarvis Street from an elite, supporting elite society. Churches, such as Jarvis Street Baptist, residential enclave to a rooming-, boarding-, and apartment- schools, such as Jarvis Collegiate, landscaped parks, like Allan house row populated by young Anglo-Celtic workers. Gardens and the Jarvis Street Lacrosse grounds, catered to the social needs of Toronto’s nineteenth-century upper class. By the 1880s, Jarvis Street had earned a reputation as the premier address in Toronto. Home to much of the city’s busi- The street composed a neighbourhood in and of itself, where ness elite, the stately homes of those such as the Massey family, residents were linked by their high social and class status. owners of Massey-Harris agricultural machinery factories, and Throughout the 1880s and into the 1890s the most frequently

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occurring occupation on the street was that of merchant— the same years were used. The directories have been shown to representing everyone from small dry-goods retailers to the be a useful tool in finding information on occupation and place largest grain wholesalers in . The street’s barristers, of employment for members of households, rather than just another frequently occurring occupation, included judges at household heads.4 Finally, the censuses of Canada for 1881, Osgoode Hall, as well as a member of Parliament and Queen’s 1891, and 1911 were consulted, using a systematic sampling of counsel. By 1920, however, the street had lost its social lustre every fifth person listed on Jarvis Street, to create sample sizes to become a significant centre of boarding houses, residential that ranged from 300 to 500 over the three years consulted. hotels, and some of Toronto’s earliest purpose-built apartment These diverse sources provide solid empirical evidence as to the buildings. The same walk up Jarvis taken in 1920 would take social and class transformations of Jarvis Street. one past rows of mansions converted into boarding and room- ing houses, hotels, and apartment buildings, as well as institu- Corporate Capitalism and the New White-Collar, tional and office buildings near Bloor Street East in the place of Non-Elite Labour the former elite residences. Moreover, these new residents were The ascendancy of corporate capitalism in the late 1800s now drawn from the ranks of the new white-collar and agent sparked important changes throughout North America. occupations. What had once been a street dominated by elite Corporate capitalism is characterized by the massive cen- families was now overwhelmingly the home of young, unat- tralization and concentration of capital, both within individual tached, white, Anglo-Celtic individuals at the beginnings of their enterprises and spatially in the city. The ascendancy of the careers and of a lower social status. corporation in this era is associated with enterprises that were The changes to the street, while mediated by the local eth- larger than ever before, dealing with vast flows of capital, huge nic and social particularities of Toronto, reflected larger- workforces, and operation areas that were spatially dispersed. scale changes occurring throughout North American cities. The size and complexity of the corporation sparked adminis- Alterations to housing practices and family status on the street trative and organizational innovations, most importantly, new were strongly associated with changing capital and labour vertically and horizontally integrated supply, distribution, and 5 practices that produced a new white-collar, non-elite, corpo- marketing chains. In turn, this new arrangement of capital rate workforce on Jarvis Street. More so than other previously has been seen as being related to the creation of a category elite residential districts near Toronto’s CBD, Jarvis Street had of de-skilled corporate labour involved in the bureaucratic and become a strip for the reproduction of white-collar labour in managerial tasks of these firms. In the corporation, the entre- the city. The street’s change over the period under study was preneurial divisions operated almost as stand-alone companies 6 a result of its built environment, as well as particular demo- and required their own office staff. As the need for manage- graphic and social changes of its earlier residents. In this sense ment grew along with the increasing size and complexity of the 7 then, Jarvis’s peculiarity in its noticeable class and social status hierarchical corporate structure, so did the number of clerical changeover by 1920 gives an insight into the ways in which jobs that were closely related to managerial functions, as well as 8 low-level spatial, social, and physical characteristics determine those jobs that were of low-skill and highly routinized. The rise the way larger changes to urban and economic structures are of the corporation was associated not only with a change in the written onto neighbourhoods. number of these jobs, but importantly, with the nature of them as well. This proletarianization of clerical work varied throughout The empirical evidence for this article comes in large part from individual contexts and was not an entirely conclusive change the City of Toronto property tax assessment rolls from the from the previous era. By 1920, though, office jobs that had years 1884, 1893, 1911, and 1920. These years were chosen once been the purview of the middle class had been de-skilled to include a roughly forty-year period and to correspond to and degraded considerably. published maps in Goad’s Fire Insurance Atlases. The assess- ment rolls give reliable information on the heads of households The rationalization of clerical and office work radically trans- for each residential unit, including apartments and in some formed the way tasks were performed in the office by the early 9 cases lodgers or boarders. As well, property owners were 1900s. Prior to this time, small offices with fewer than five em- also listed, allowing for an analysis of owner-occupancy and ployees typically dominated, featuring clerks working as cashier, 10 landlord patterns. The large sample size for the assessment bookkeeper, and accountant all in one. The enlargement of rolls, which were taken in full, ranged from a low of 208 in 1884 clerical staffs under corporate capitalism was accompanied by to 448 in 1920. While these are valuable sources, they have a many office tasks that were monotonous and routine, so that by number of disadvantages. Most seriously for my purposes, the the 1900s, the traditional roles of a Victorian clerk could have assessments give only the marital status of female household- been fragmented into a number of separate professions. Indeed, ers, rather than age and occupation for many of the years. This by the early 1900s, new occupations such as telephone opera- skews the occupational data to those jobs dominated by men tors, bookkeepers, and cashiers began to appear much more in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As well, the as- frequently in official enumerations. The routinization of what was sessments tend to omit boarders and lodgers. To make up for once a skilled profession led to the reduction of skilled work to 11 this bias towards home-owning men, Might’s City Directories for abstract labour. While the city’s wealth increased with the influx of capital associated with the rise of corporations in Toronto,

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Jarvis Street’s relationship to that capital changed considerably, owner-rentier occupations remained about the same, dropping in ways that can be seen to reflect both its own position and slightly throughout the study period, a function of older residents that of the changing urban structure of Toronto.12 remaining in their houses as the street changed around them (see table 1).18 Their ever-decreasing share of the street was at The proliferation of employment in the modern corporate office the foundation of the change that Jarvis Street experienced. and an overall decrease in the necessary skill sets to turn most tasks into abstract labour had significant class and social impli- Between 1884 and 1920 the number of people in white- and cations. By the end of the Victorian era, the status of the clerk blue-collar occupations on Jarvis had risen by 58 per cent to had changed as the job category expanded. While office labour 113. At the same time, the number of those engaged in agent had always been present in some form or another on Jarvis occupations rose fivefold, as reflected in the growth of the Street, these large-scale changes as well as the numerical number of “travellers” and “agents” listed on Jarvis Street.19 proliferation of residents employed in those professions on the Residents like John Birchard, a travelling salesman selling street by the 1900s represented a change in the street’s social radiators for the Montreal-based Warren King Ltd. Company, and class character. In 1920, Jarvis Street’s twenty clerks made or Howard Ingram, a salesman for the Republic Motor Truck up just over 6 per cent of all occupations listed for the street in Company, were part of this growth in commission-based jobs.20 assessments—followed by the second most frequently occur- Jarvis Street residents’ occupations in the 1920s hint at a de- ring occupation, boarding- and rooming-house keepers.13 In parture from the previous era, demonstrating the close relation- 1893 by contrast, merchants were the most common, and with ship between large-scale economic transformations and the thirty of them living on Jarvis Street they significantly outnum- small-scale changes that Jarvis Street experienced. bered the eleven clerks at the time.14 These clerks’ growing presence on Jarvis Street indicated its Economic Change and Shifting Spatial Patterns in position as burgeoning home to the city’s new corporate labour Toronto force. As their share of the street grew, white-collar labour- From 1871 to 1891 the number of manufacturing enterprises ers increased in absolute numbers as well, to more than three in Toronto quadrupled, while the manufacturing workforce 21 times that of the 1880s to thirty-four in 1920 (see table 1). More increased sevenfold. At the same time, the city’s financial than this, however, was the fact that white-collar labour, at 11 industry flourished, controlling an increasing flow of capital per cent of all occupations, was more than the city’s average each year. Between 1895 and 1918 the value of the city’s banks’ of over 8 per cent for the same time period. At the same time, clearings had increased almost 600 per cent to more than three 22 agents, those who lived on commission, made up 14 per cent of billion dollars. This economic boom was accompanied by all occupations in 1920, almost triple their share for the city as one in population as well. Between 1884 and 1920 the number a whole in 1921.15 While the total number of occupations in the of residents on Jarvis Street enumerated by the assessment agent and white-collar working-class categories increased in rolls had increased by 115 per cent. As Canada’s economy Toronto from the 1880s to the 1920s, Jarvis Street reflected this expanded with westward settlement, Toronto’s economy grew increase more so than the rest of the city.16 These changes to with the increasing location of headquarters within the city’s the street’s occupational structure lead to an understanding of CBD, as did the number of people whose labour supported 23 the tight relationship between neighbourhood change on Jarvis such enterprises. Street and Toronto’s changing economy. While Toronto had always been a commercial centre, the growth in size of its firms after 1880 was unprecedented. By 1918, huge Toronto and Emergent Corporate Capitalism corporations had come to dominate a city whose economic en- Until the 1880s, Toronto was a centre for regional trade, trans- gine had previously been driven by small-scale, local enterpris- portation, and finance. Much of this work was centred in the es.24 The rise of the corporation and the new regime of corporate area bounded by Jarvis Street on the east, to the capitalism was visibly manifested in the city’s westward-shifting west, to the south, and East to the north, office geography on King Street between Yonge and Bay. The encompassing a wholesaling and warehousing area, as well as 1890s gave Toronto its first purpose-built office buildings of more mixed warehouse and office district.17 Many of Jarvis Street’s than six stories.25 The construction of new office towers, such as residents in the late 1880s either owned businesses in this area the seven-storey Temple Building on , demonstrated or were employed there, such as Robert Beatty, of 166 Jarvis this continued shift away from the previous era’s CBD nexus Street, whose brokerage office was located at 61 King Street around King Street East and Jarvis Street.26 The new office East, or James Boustead of number 190, whose real-estate towers and corporations housed in them attracted an increasing company was located at 12 Adelaide Street East. That many of number of supportive services such as financial and law firms, Jarvis Street’s residents were employed in this area hints at the as well as a burgeoning retail strip, which extended northward links between the city’s dominant economic activities and the on Yonge. The changing geography of retail and office clusters in street’s occupations in the 1880s. Even as elite occupations Toronto’s CBD shifted the centre of employment as well. continued to be present in the assessment rolls, their share of Along with the growth in white-collar or office work occupa- Jarvis Street’s total occupations was slipping. The number of tions came one in the middle class. To serve the needs of the

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Table 1: Top five occupations on Jarvis Street by group, per year 1884 1893 1910 1920 Occupation n Occupation n Occupation n Occupation n Owner-rentier Manager 11 Merchant 30 Merchant 23 Manager 15 Merchant 8 Gentleman 16 Manager 9 Merchant 14 Manufacturer 1 Manufacturer 15 Manufacturer 3 Manufacturer 8 Pensioner 1 Manager 7 Circulation manager 1 President 3 Bank manager 1 N 21 N 71 N 36 N 40 % of occupations 13 % of occupations 29 % of occupations 20 % of occupations 13

Middle-class / Barrister 13 Barrister 18 Doctor 6 Rooming-house 19 operators operator Doctor 7 Doctor 6 Dentist 5 Doctor 9 Lawyer 4 Banker 5 Inspector 5 Druggist 8 Teacher 4 Minister 5 Barrister 4 Tailor 6 Druggist 3 Bookkeeper 4 Accountant 3 Teacher 5 N 69 N 87 N 71 N 117 % of occupations 42 % of occupations 35 % of occupations 39% % of occupations 37

Blue-collar labour Gelder 4 Coachman 5 Builder 5 Labourer 7 Carpenter 3 Printer 4 Painter 4 Carpenter 6 Plumber 3 Shoe cutter 4 Chauffeur 3 Machinist 6 Builder 2 Gardener 3 Machinist 2 Painter 6 Caretaker 2 Barber 2 Barber 1 Caretaker 4 N 57 N 46 N 40 N 79 % of occupations 35 % of occupations 18 % of occupations 22 % of occupations 25

White-collar Clerk 8 Clerk 11 Clerk 5 Clerk 20 labour Mail clerk 1 Cashier 1 Eaton’s clerk 1 Nurse 4 Mail clerk 1 Stereotyper 1 Telegrapher 4 Post office worker 1 Civic employee 2 Stationer 1 Mail order clerk 1 N 9 N 17 N 7 N 34 % of occupations 5 % of occupations 7 % of occupations 4 % of occupations 11

Agent Agent 2 Traveller 9 Traveller 8 Salesman 13 Broker 1 Agent 8 Insurance agent 4 Traveller 9 Dealer 1 Broker 3 Broker 4 Manufacturer’s agent 6 Estate agent 1 Stock Commission 1 Agent 4 Broker 5 Insurance agent 1 Salesman 1 Salesman 3 Agent 3 N 9 N 28 N 30 N 45 % of occupations 5 % of occupations 11 % of occupations 16 % of occupations 14 Total residents 208 Total residents 298 Total residents 318 Total residents 448 No occupation available 43 No occupation avail- 49 No occupation avail- 134 No occupation avail- 133 able able able Sources: City of Toronto Assessment Rolls, 1884–1920

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Figure 2: Location of employment of Jarvis Street residents, 1893.

corporate economy, the number of barristers, accountants, and The relationship between Jarvis Street residents and the other related jobs increased as well. The expansion of these employment district of the CBD was further enhanced by their office jobs could be seen by looking at the residents of the King proximity to one another. As the city’s economy diversified and Edward Apartments located at 190–2 Jarvis Street, who worked office construction expanded throughout the downtown core, as accountants, agents, auctioneers, bookkeepers, brokers, one of the largest non-manufacturing employment districts newspaper circulation managers, and insurance agents.27 The remained within two kilometres of Jarvis Street. In 1893, 91 apartments’ residents mirrored the increasing size of the corpo- per cent of Jarvis Street’s residents lived within one kilometre rate workforce and hinted at the social differentiation between of their place of work (figure 2). As offices expanded west and purpose-built apartments at the time and converted housing. north in the core, so did Jarvis Street’s jobs. By 1910, 76 per Using place-of-work addresses for Jarvis Street residents con- cent of residents worked less than a kilometre away from home, tained in Might’s Directories, a definite pattern of employment that while almost 90 per cent worked within two kilometres (figure 3). leads to an understanding of Jarvis’s functional linkages to the The slightly increased distances were a function of the changing corporate and retail sectors emerges. In 1893 (figure 2), the centre location of offices. As the number of office workers increased of the residents’ employment cluster is located almost directly at on Jarvis Street, they more often worked in the offices that had the intersection of Yonge and King Streets. In 1910, it had moved begun to spring up further west in the core along University slightly north and west to Queen Street West (figure 3), and by Avenue.28 1921 (figure 4) had moved north of Queen on Yonge. Jarvis Street Civil servants working at City Hall or Queen’s Park, like Stanley residents such as Gus Baker, of number 190–2, a clerk at the Meeking, a clerk at the Provincial Ministry of Lands, Forests, and Robert Simpson Company on the corner of Queen and Yonge Mines,29 demonstrated the shifting geographies of employment Streets, worked at the centre of this growing and shifting CBD. within the core. By 1921, the number of people working less than

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Figure 3: Location of employment of Jarvis Street residents, 1910.

two kilometres from their homes fell only slightly, to more than and the corporate city, a related functional segregation occurred 85 per cent (figure 4). Commutes for Jarvis Street’s residents as well. The pre-industrial city was made up of mixed blocks that were still walkable and much shorter than for those in the city as held businesses and residences and saw little class differen- a whole. White-collar workers on Jarvis were drawn there for a tiation. Following large-scale industrialization these land-use host of reasons, of which proximity to employment was surely patterns gave way to specialized districts. Segregation based one. However, the street differed from other nearby streets in on class or type of economic activity dominated, such as the large part as the result of spatial differentiation occurring at the increasing specialization of Toronto’s CBD into single-use office same time. For the large number of working-class clerical work- or retail areas by the turn of the twentieth century.30 The pre- ers, Jarvis Street was thus a doubly advantageous place to live. industrial city was small in scale and spatially mixed in class and As the industrializing city had expanded and become increas- social status. In Toronto, as in most pre-industrial cities, class ingly differentiated in class and function, the lower-priced hous- separation was manifested in a pattern of micro- ing that Jarvis Street offered by the turn of the century allowed segregation. Main north-south streets such as Jarvis were home workers to forgo the cost of a streetcar fare. These processes to the wealthy, while side streets housed working-class resi- produced a relatively new form of housing in boarding and room- dents.31 No neighbourhood could be considered truly homoge- ing houses that catered to those of lower incomes. neous, and Jarvis Street’s proximity to other areas before 1880 exemplified this characteristic. While the street itself housed the Shifting Geographies of Class and Land Use city’s elites, its lower portion south of Queen Street was sur- The development of a corporate economy in Toronto was related rounded by factories, markets, fishing docks, and other industrial to a growing spatial differentiation in class and function. As capi- land uses. A few blocks to its east around Parliament Street sat tal was centralized and concentrated both within the corporation Cabbagetown, one of the city’s most notorious working-class

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Figure 4: Location of employment of Jarvis Street residents, 1920. areas. Class segregation prior to the 1880s could be meas- The drain of wealthy residents from Jarvis Street beginning in ured by short blocks, rather than kilometres. New development 1880 hints at the attraction of homogeneous suburban areas. practices by the end of the nineteenth century would cement the Jarvis Street, which had since its initial construction been home rationalization of space along functional and class lines. to Toronto’s elite families, housed them for only two or three generations. Demographic transitions then worked alongside Changing geographies of the old city were related to its physi- urban spatial changes to transform Jarvis Street, so that by 1910, cal expansion outward. The growth of the city’s transportation the children of the founding families of the street were more likely network and increasing capital aimed at real-estate develop- to be found in Rosedale than on their parents’ estates. In 1911, ment encouraged the subdivision of land at the urban fringe.32 several members of the Gooderham clan could be found in that New developments began to spring up in natural-amenity-rich neighbourhood.33 The 1910 assessment rolls show the outward settings on Toronto’s outskirts, such as Rosedale, which would movement of former owner-occupants. The O’Hallorans, headed soon supplant Jarvis Street as an elite address. By the 1880s by Michael O’Halloran, had lived at 122 and 124 Jarvis Street large estates had grown along Rosedale’s planned, labyrinthine since before the 1880s, but the 1910 assessment found them streets nestled on the edge of the picturesque Rosedale ravine. living in the upper-middle-class community of the Beaches in These new residential neighbourhoods were homogeneous Toronto’s east end. The fact that this movement was done as a upper and upper middle class and were physically separated social group can be seen by looking at the case of the Kyle and from working-class residents like never before. The 1900s saw McCallum families. Until 1910, the neighbouring families were the Toronto, like most North American cities, experience a massive owner-occupants of 160–2 and 164–6 Jarvis Street. After 1911, building boom. The addition of neighbourhoods on the urban both families had moved to a wealthy apartment building at 619 fringe, such as , , Rosedale, and Forest , in posh North Toronto. Though the opening up Hill added to the increasing social differentiation of the city.

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of land on the urban fringe and new transit lines to the suburbs 1884 1924 were important enticements to moving, this shift was also related to important changes in the urban land market.34 Engineering and transportation technologies, such as bridges over the Don Valley, made areas like North Toronto or Rosedale increasingly attractive to wealthy homeowners. At the same time, the pro- cess of industrialization and the massive inputs of capital associ- ated with it into Toronto led to rapidly increasing land values in the urban core. Land adjacent to the CBD began to fetch higher prices than ever before, rapidly increasing along with office and commercial development. The increasingly differentiated spatial composition of the city on the basis of function, the rising price of urban land, and the encroachment of higher value uses such as offices or retail were important factors in the transformation of Jarvis Street. Areas adjacent to the CBD became prohibitively expensive for single-family houses as land prices skyrocketed. As elite fami- lies decreased in size and housework staff became harder to obtain, the costs of maintaining such large single-family homes became unbearable. The twentieth century ushered in an era of speculative or investment ownership in the city. The Ward, a mostly Jewish, Italian, and to some extent Chinese immigrant neighbourhood to the west of the CBD, experienced extreme speculation. Properties were held until values were high enough Figure 5: Goad’s Fire Insurance Atlas, Jarvis Street between Dundas to sell, being used for rental accommodation. Marked disinvest- Street and East. 35 ment occurred, creating a slum in the area. While land values Note the intensification of the built landscape along the western side of rose all around the CBD, areas not threatened by immediate the street. Of particular interest is the construction of the Royal Cecil commercial development experienced fewer such speculative Apartments (bottom left) on the site of the former home of W. B. Ham- transactions. Jarvis Street, on the east side of a westward- ilton. Conversion of existing homes can be seen in the three separate row expanding CBD, was one such area. Properties there were held houses at 243–9 in 1884, which in 1924 have been converted into a single onto by families for multiple generations, and at no time did structure, with a new address of 283–7. rapid handovers of ownership take place. The street saw virtu- ally no commercial redevelopments through this period. Land prices increased at a much lower rate than in other areas, yet the large scale of these new multi-unit residences. These new were still too high for single-family use. Properties were increas- units comprised single-family homes converted into apart- ingly converted to income-generating usages. ments or boarding houses and those purpose built for those uses. The building at 321 Jarvis Street, for instance, was a Jarvis Street was located at the nexus of two phenomena: single-family dwelling housing one person in 1893, but by 1920, increasing segregation by class and rising urban property a new purpose-built apartment stood in its place, housing fifty values. The street experienced somewhat of a decline in social residents.38 Indeed, a look at the fire insurance maps from these status as the next generation of Toronto’s wealthiest chose to dates shows the changes clearly, as building footprints increase locate in other areas of the city. As an area close to the CBD, it along with the growth in population (see figure 5). High rents commanded high prices yet was out of the northwestern of and an expanding market as urbanization increased rapidly at commercial redevelopment. Owners on streets like Jarvis, pe- the turn of the century encouraged the growth of large boarding ripheral to the CBD but outside its growth path, found that they and rooming houses, residential hotels, and apartments across could turn a quick profit with the creation of multi-unit residential North America. From Jarvis Street to Midtown Manhattan to buildings. Estimates of historical returns on small buildings with San Francisco’s Tenderloin district, boarding and rooming areas fewer than fourteen units range between 10 per cent and 30 per became a common feature of the North American city.39 The cent in just the first few years of operation.36 Indeed, through- process through which Jarvis Street was converted to such a out the industrial era, apartment buildings were considered district is best demonstrated by a single example. one of the preferred urban real estate investments in Canada.37 By 1920 the assessment rolls had listed thirty-four residential The houses at what were numbered 240 and 242 Jarvis Street buildings with more than one separate household or apartment in 1920 provide a glimpse into the creation of a boarding house within, almost double the number for 1893. Of those, seven or residential hotel. In 1884 these were two separate, semi- were made up of more than ten separate households, showing detached houses, each home to under ten people. By 1910,

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the houses had been bought by two separate owners and held institutionalized boarding and rooming houses, apartments, and twelve and seven people respectively. By 1920, Westminster residential hotels in places such as Jarvis Street. Realty Company, Ltd., had bought both. The new owners While there were differences between the general group of demolished the two houses and constructed the Westminster lodging, boarding, and rooming houses, and the cluster of Hotel, which held one hundred residents. The presence of a hotels and apartments, much is obscured in the usage of the corporation as a real estate owner points to the relatively new terms in academic and contemporary literature. Generally, lodg- relationship between Jarvis Street and the nascent mortgage ing houses provided no services on premises, while boarding and insurance sectors in Toronto.40 This transformation was evi- houses provided food and some light housework done by the denced further by the sudden appearance in the 1910 assess- landlord or servants.44 The terms boarding or lodging houses ment rolls of owner-groups, real estate companies, corporations, were and are typically used to denote the most notorious forms and trust and savings companies such as the syndicate headed of shared accommodation, such as the overcrowded immigrant by Giles Ransom, who owned the King Edward Apartments boarding house. The concepts of the hotel or apartment house, with more than fifty residents, which had replaced a series of clearly differentiated in modern terminology, and the boundaries row houses. Shifts to Jarvis Street’s social composition and between the two were very permeable. Even hotels, which at urban society at large changed the face of boarding, and the the time did function as resting places for travellers, were more street, forever. often than not home to a large permanent population. The lines Prior to the 1880s, lodging was a common practice throughout between different types of multi-unit residential buildings, in North America. Experienced largely within the family household, Toronto, were so blurred that they can all be taken as a single it had been considered a practice well suited for young people entity, differentiated in the class and ethnic characteristics of at the start of their family life cycles who required low-cost ac- their occupants. The business of the residential hotel and other commodation outside of their own family home. The relationship multi-unit residences was a large component of Toronto’s cen- between lodger and host was considered mutually beneficial, tral city housing. with lodgers taking the place of adult children who had left The number of multi-unit residences grew significantly in Toronto and providing hosts with a form of financial security.41 Lodging at the end of the nineteenth century. In 1898, C. S. Clark found operated within the household economy. For many homeown- that the city’s hotels had many overnight guests but that “the ers in the nineteenth century, lodging was a necessary aspect permanent boarders of these establishments are also very prof- of the financial realities of keeping home. A house represented itable.” 45 Hotel advertisements proliferated in Toronto’s news- the ultimate in financial security and provided a source of equity papers throughout the 1900s. They offered both the “American and future income in the absence of formal retirement plans. For plan,” which included a room and three meals, as well as the many, taking in lodgers was an important economic strategy to “European plan,” which covered only the cost of the room.46 increase the ability to own a house.42 By the end of the nine- Even within the same institution, the level and type of service teenth century, however, lodging and boarding became increas- differed considerably. The fuzzy boundaries that separated ingly commodified and experienced outside of the family home, hotels, boarding houses, and lodging houses in the industrial as it was on Jarvis Street. North American city also included apartment houses. In the The influx of people into urban areas for work that accompanied early 1900s, the notion of the apartment building as a collec- economic growth in Toronto had created the impetus for a new tion of autonomous living spaces had not yet surfaced. Shared form of urban life. While family lodging remained strong in the kitchens and washrooms could be found in many an apartment city, reaching its peak in 1915, overall the relationship between house. Apartments had only recently evolved from hotels, and lodgers and host had changed considerably.43 Lodging became the first apartment buildings in North America, in Boston and a commodity. The rise of apartments, rooming houses, and New York City, were built as residential hotels.47 The inter- boarding houses in both size and number throughout North changeability of categories that such residential institutions en- America is endemic of this new relationship. On Jarvis Street, joyed could be seen in their advertisements in newspapers. For the new relationships between workers and their place of instance, the Inglewood building at 510 Jarvis Street advertised employment was strongly intertwined with the rise of purpose- its “Beautiful rooms in Exclusive Pension, excellent table,” under built boarding houses. As the new organizational paradigms of the “Board,” “Hotel,” and “Apartment” listings in the Globe’s modern industry became standard in North America, worker classified section in 1911.48 Whatever they were called, these alienation became commonplace. The increased physical institutions were a crucial component in neighbourhood change distance between work and home and the loss of the practice occurring on Jarvis Street. of boarding near where one worked demonstrated the way in Jarvis Street’s single-family homes were too large and too which early twentieth-century workers differed from their prede- expensive for the young, working-class residents who flocked cessors. Urban living now meant a greater degree of anonymity to the street after the 1880s. The large houses of Toronto’s early and social freedom than ever before. In parallel was the rise of industrial elite were converted into rooming houses and hotels, boarding outside the realm of the family. A large, new market or torn down and replaced with purpose-built apartments developed that encouraged the increasing size and scale of or lodging houses. Neighbourhood change on Jarvis Street

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was led by the conversion to accommodate the new practice comprised a full 20 per cent more of Jarvis Street’s residents of institutionalized multi-unit living situations. Indeed, these than the next-largest age group, those between thirty and forty- conversions led the way for the purpose-built institutions and four.57 More than any other, it was this age group within which were championed by some in the city as an agreeable means to was most likely to be found the clerks and sales people who relieve housing shortages, particularly after the First World War. made up the new class of white-collar and agent labour. Jarvis As an editorial in the Globe stated, “Some relief may be found Street in the early 1900s was dominated by unattached young by affording wider scope for the conversion of houses . . . into people, including a large number of women. small apartments, particularly those mansions of the wealthy The gender composition of Jarvis Street changed significantly which they have deserted for homes in new districts.” 49 By 1899, from the 1880s onward. In 1884, female heads of households Toronto had its first purpose-built apartment house, and Jarvis accounted for only 13 per cent of the street’s total. By 1920, Street was home to a nascent chain of these institutions, made they accounted for 32 per cent. More significantly though, their up mostly of converted mansions.50 However, as the notoriety marital status had changed as well, demonstrating the street’s of tenements and other types of shared living in places such as character as a home of the unattached. The female heads New York grew, Toronto shied away from the construction of of households in 1884 were almost 80 per cent made up of more of these buildings, banning them outright in many neigh- widows, while the percentage of widows as female heads of bourhoods.51 As home ownership in Toronto grew in the early households in 1920 was thirty percentage points lower. The 1900s, it was encouraged by officials who claimed that “the rise in number of single women on the street was significantly ideal condition would be that every family, large or small, had related to female labour in the new corporate workplace and the its own home separate and distinct, with plenty of fresh air, light new low-skill, white-collar jobs. Women as a percentage of the and room for a garden.”52 clerical labour force in Canada grew by 166 per cent between Jarvis Street’s declining rate of home ownership flew in the face 1891 and 1921.58 Women were sought by employers in large of both civic leaders’ best efforts and the city’s overall trends. part because they were able to pay them 46 per cent less on While large parts of Toronto seemed to be pursuing the dream average than male counterparts in Canadian workplaces of of single-family home ownership, Jarvis Street experienced the the 1920s.59 These working women represented a real change opposite phenomenon. While the rate of owner-occupancy in in urban society.60 For the first time, large numbers of young Toronto as a whole increased over the period,53 it decreased on women were living outside the family sphere, working corporate Jarvis Street.54 In 1884 there were eighty-eight owner-occupied jobs across North America’s cities. Mostly white, and in the homes on street, at a rate of 39 per cent. In 1920 the number case of Toronto, Canadian, American, or British born, these had grown by only nine people, and the rate had decreased to women were a significant factor in Jarvis Street’s neighbour- 21 per cent. At the same time, the number of residents on the hood change.61 street who were not owner-occupants increased from 120 to On Jarvis Street, women such as Margaret Coumeau and Ida 370, more than 80 per cent of all residents in 1920.55 The rise of Barry, who lived in the King Edwards Apartments at 190–2 new residential institutions on Jarvis Street was closely related Jarvis Street, as well as Margaret McDonald, of number 436, to changes to the street’s demographics, which had made it the typified this new group of young, unattached women. According home of the mostly young and unattached. to the census, Margaret McDonald, of Scottish descent, and Ida Barry, an Irish-Canadian, were both born in Ontario.62 Moreover, Independence and the Modern Urban Lifestyle all three women clerked at Eaton’s Department Store on the By the 1920s Jarvis Street’s new residents differed from their corner of Queen and Yonge Streets. Effie Mitchell, of number predecessors not just in their class or occupational back- 308, worked within the same corporate-retail bureaucracy, as a grounds but in their age and family status as well. While the telephone operator.63 These women, white, Canadian born, and street had been one of families in their homes in the 1880s, unattached, represented much broader changes in the labour this pattern changed considerably over the intervening dec- market and were actors within a new form of often contentious ades. The decline in families on the street can be seen in the urban lifestyles. The introduction of so many strangers, young massive decrease in the percentage of children there. In 1881, people of both sexes, into the same residential establishments according to the census, 30 per cent of Jarvis Street’s resi- in places such as Jarvis Street represented a danger to the dents were under the age of fifteen. By 1891 this had declined social norms of the time. As Peel has shown in places such as to roughly 17 per cent, and in 1911 had dropped to only 9 per Boston, the lack of supervision and the free mingling of both cent. Compared to the rest of the city, Jarvis Street was again sexes, as well as the anonymity of living among strangers, wor- atypical. The percentage of the city’s population under the ried reformers who railed against the so-called lodger evil.64 age of fifteen in 1881 was only three percentage points higher Nowhere was this truer than in Toronto. than on Jarvis Street. By 1911, Jarvis Street’s proportion was a full fourteen percentage points lower than the city’s.56 At the Clark provides an insight into how the lodging house was same time, the young adult population, those between the ages viewed by Toronto society at the turn of the century. For many of fifteen and twenty-nine, was increasing, and in 1911 they of the city’s leaders, these institutions were represented by the made up almost 45 per cent of all residents. Young adults thus crowded immigrant boarding houses of the Ward, and were

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seen in the worst light: “They are planned to afford the great- Indeed young men and women who were unfamiliar with daily est accommodation in point of number with the least in point of household tasks would have found many of these services comfort. The places are infested with vermin, and the rooms are available, for a fee, within their new residences. Advertisements small, dark and dirty . . . And among those who are obliged to for institutions on Jarvis Street appearing in the Globe’s clas- take refuge in these holes are doubtless those who have seen sified section during the 1900s invariably touted the availability better days. Besides runaway boys, drunken mechanics and of meals on premises. The Tenyke, of 163 Jarvis Street, for broken down mankind generally.”65 instance, touted itself as “quiet, centrally located, with all the comforts of home good cooking.”69 These advertisements were The sentiments of reformers and journalists like Clark were a direct appeal to men and women who could have chosen to echoed by civic leaders. The growth of these institutions along board or lodge within family homes but chose to live in these Jarvis Street and other downtown neighbourhoods to house institutions. Places like the Tenyke or the Inglewood were an young single men and women was viewed as a distinctly nega- alternative to boarding in a family home outside the urban core, tive phenomenon by those in power: “In the section bounded which provided for all the service needs once provided exclu- roughly by Bloor, Parliament, Bathurst and the waterfront there sively within the home. Their strong linkages to the offices that are literally thousands of rooming houses . . . from the small employed this new labour, as well as their physical proximity to private dwelling . . . to the large old-fashioned residences with it, increased Jarvis Street’s appeal. ten, twelve or fourteen rooms. Very many of these are crowded to capacity with young men and women, who may be said to Along with their advertisements for meals, many of Jarvis herd together . . . All are compelled to use the same accommo- Street’s institutions also heralded their central location, such as dation. . . . I am convinced, and am not alone in the conviction, the Avonmore, which was a “Private hotel—Centrally Located that rooming houses are the curse of a big city. The temptations Jarvis and Gerrard Streets.”70 Jarvis Street was centrally located, toward immorality to which those living under such conditions not just within walking distance to Toronto’s largest employment subjected are, I believe, a source of great danger.”66 centre, but also its largest entertainment centre as well. From theatres, to dance halls, to restaurants, “Toronto the Good” However much these civic and social leaders railed against provided ample opportunity for entertainment and leisure at boarding and rooming in districts like Jarvis Street, their num- the turn of the century. According to Might’s Directory for 1920, bers continued to increase. The dangers warned of in buildings Jarvis Street was within one kilometre of 145 restaurants and and neighbourhoods with so many young, unattached men twenty-seven theatres (see figure 6). Jarvis Street’s attractions and women, and the “immoral” situations therein were part of for young people were understood by civic leaders, even if what made living there such an attractive alternative to boarding they were reviled by social reformers. The institutions on Jarvis within the family home for many residents. Street, with their anonymity and moral dangers, existed else- The impersonal nature of modern boarding was attractive to the where in the city as well. In nearby Cabbagetown and the Ward new white-collar workers of Toronto’s corporate economy. The lodging houses were common. While the city discouraged this mass rural-to-urban migration stream that flowed into Toronto at type of urban space in those areas, Jarvis Street’s development the turn of the century was composed of the children of Ontario and change was given tacit approval. farmers without any land to inherit, young single women, and Though an 1873 by-law had given the city the power to control other groups attracted to the growing labour opportunities of building types in neighbourhoods, Jarvis Street was routinely Toronto.67 The greater social freedom that such anonymous given exemptions.71 As a result, the street was unusual in living arrangements allowed was a key component in Jarvis Toronto, not just for the number of its multi-unit residences but Street’s attractiveness to residents. For them, living on their own also for the lack of debate over the street’s development.72 As for the first time in cities across North America, these institutions other areas of the city enacted strict zoning measures, such satisfied their desire for increased independence from supervi- as the upper-middle-class Annex neighbourhood, north of sion.68 In his social survey of Toronto in 1898, Clark explains why downtown, Jarvis Street’s property owners were routinely the establishments on Jarvis Street, with their anonymity and in- granted building permits for extra storeys, extensions, and even dependence, were preferable to lodging in family homes. Horror construction of apartments and hotels.73 Jarvis Street’s unique- stories about hawkish supervision of tenants, eavesdropping, ness among other boarding and lodging areas was in large part and judgemental comments from hosts all dogged the young a result of its ethnic composition. At a time when fears over person striking out on her or his own for the first time. These boarding, lodging, and new urban lifestyles in general were boarding institutions also provided necessary services to the intimately tied to the influx of Southern and Eastern European new corps of white-collar workers in the context of an increas- immigrants to Toronto, Jarvis Street was home to an entirely ingly commodified household service industry. different group. The Ward, with its largely immigrant popula- With the expansion of the service industry at the turn of the cen- tion, was viewed as a constant menace by city leaders and tury, many of the essential services that had taken place within the media. As in the case of Ida Barry or Margaret McDonald, the household sphere, such as laundry, cooking, and washing, almost all of Jarvis Street’s residents were white. Most were were commodified in places such as laundries and restaurants. born in Canada, Britain, or the United States, so Jarvis Street

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Figure 6: Theatres and restaurants 1 kilometre from Jarvis Street, 1920.

represented a mainly Anglo-Celtic boarding area, whose inhab- Street is to be vacated and . . . turned to the much needed use itants’ racial and ethnic characteristics made them non-other of the girl wage-earner, to assist in the vexed ‘boarding house’ and therefore non-threatening. Approval for the street’s role as problem,”75 and the Victor Home for young women, which rooming and boarding house was tacitly granted by an official housed more than thirty residents in 1920, was the result. This who wrote, “I am convinced there will always be a ‘hub’ popu- attention paid to Jarvis Street and its residents was the ex- lation, a very large proportion of which is to-day living under ception rather than the rule. Searches through the Globe and adverse conditions in rooming houses, and I believe that their a number of City of Toronto reports turned up no more than cur- conditions would be vast improved by the erection of properly sory mentions of the street’s converted boarding houses, hotels, planned apartment houses, and the conversions of large room- and apartments. While Cabbagetown to the east, and the Ward ing houses into apartments.”74 to the west, received plenty of attention from reformers and media, the area’s ethnic and largely white-collar identity allowed The implicit approval by civic leaders of boarding and lodg- Jarvis Street’s residents to live in a manner previously unheard ing houses for newly arrived young workers was followed by of in Toronto. pragmatic steps by social reformers to provide a wholesome alternative to mixed-sex accommodations. Conclusion By 1910, out of patronizing concern for the single women of Jarvis Street changed considerably from 1880 to 1920. Its Jarvis Street, the Methodist Church got into the boarding house transformation consisted of a shift from Toronto’s most elite game: “Within a year probably a roomy red building on Jarvis space to a boarding and lodging area housing a predominately

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white-collar, corporate labour population. The street’s change Acknowledgements hints at the way larger processes of employment and class I would like to extend thanks for the helpful comments on this structure operated with local forms of political control and land paper from Robert Lewis, for whose course this research was development to produce neighbourhood change. While much of first conducted. I would also like to thank Alan Gordan and the the work on neighbourhoods and the industrial city has focused two anonymous referees for their very comprehensive feedback on the issues surrounding increasing urban land values, the on this article. emergence of a geography of increased spatial differentiation, the effect of employment change, and the larger economic con- text has been, in many ways, missing. The massive growth of Notes lower-skilled, white-collar employment profoundly influenced the 1 “Carnival,” Globe, 21 June 1890. way in which other processes of spatial and functional changes 2 “Plan for Subdivision of the Jarvis Street Lacrosse Grounds,” 1900, item 17, manifested themselves at the local scale. The clerks and sales- file 6, series 343, fonds 79, City of Toronto Archives (hereafter CTA). people, travellers and accountants who were the products of 3 “Auction,” Globe, 7 July 1886. corporate capitalism’s rise in the North American city inhabited 4 See Richard Harris and Ben Moffat, “How Reliable Is the Modern City these formerly elite spaces on Jarvis Street in part because their Directory,” Canadian Geographer 30 (1986): 154–8. very existence was part of the large process of change. 5 Alfred Chandler, Scale and Scope: The Dynamics of Industrial Capitalism To take each of the practices, such as housing, labour, or life- (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 1990). style—which constitute neighbourhood change—individually is 6 Harry Braverman, Labour and Monopoly Capital (New York: Monthly Review, to miss the larger context of these practices. The growth of the 1974). corporation in Toronto created a new category of workers who 7 In this article “clerical jobs” is used to refer to all those white-collar, de-skilled inhabited a novel social space within the city. At an even larger jobs typically classified under the heading of office work. This includes not just clerks, but also typists, stenographers, secretaries, and others. See scale, these changes were related to macro-economic pro- Graham Lowe, Women in the Administrative Revolution (Toronto: University cesses occurring in Canada and North America at large at the of Toronto Press, 1987), for a detailed look at the types of labour performed time. As the Canadian West was opened up and Toronto’s role by Canadian office workers in corporate employment around the turn of the as a command and control centre for the hinterland economy century. ensured that massive capital from profits in mining and forestry 8 Braverman, Labour and Monopoly Capital, 256. would flow into the city, it transformed nearly every aspect of 9 See Lowe, Women in the Administrative Revolution. urban life. Jarvis Street is one of many particular outcomes of 10 See Gregory Anderson, Victorian Clerks (Manchester: Manchester University the combination of disparate processes related to the growth of Press, 1976). corporate capitalism, urban, spatial, and demographic change 11 See Braverman, Labour and Monopoly Capital, 121, for a thorough examina- moderated by local particularities. While many areas in Toronto tion of the degradation of skills within clerical work beginning in the late experienced rapid and massive neighbourhood change in the nineteenth century. same time period, Jarvis Street was unique in several ways. 12 In order to analyze the distinctions emerging from research of primary Its mainly white, Anglo-Celtic residents, the majority of them materials, occupations have been divided into four separate groups derived involved in white-collar employment, were differentiated from roughly from the same classification as Richard Harris does in Unplanned other boarding areas in places like Cabbagetown or the Ward Suburbs: Toronto’s American Tragedy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University as a result of the social status associated with corporate labour Press, 1996). These groups are (1) owners/rentiers, those with control of capital, (2) middle class/operators—those who utilize knowledge skill sets and ethnicity. and operate with these skills, (3) less-skilled labour, including both white Using Jarvis Street as a case study of the North American city collar and blue collar, or those typically at the whim of capital, and finally (4) agents, those with little to no control of capital and reliant on commissions from the 1880s to the 1920s extends the linkages that we can and unsteady earnings. Even with high commissions, the nature of the job draw between neighbourhood change and broader economic was less permanent and therefore more transient than other types consid- processes. Jarvis’s particularity as one of the most high-profile ered here. elite spaces shows the process of neighbourhood change in 13 “Assessment Rolls, Toronto, Wards 2 and 3,” 1920, files 1111–22, series 612, a way that is less subtle, but no less commonplace, than what fonds 200, CTA. was occurring elsewhere. By examining the ways that housing, 14 “Assessment Rolls, Toronto, Wards 2 and 3,” 1893, files 463–7, series 612, labour, and lifestyle practices changed during the era of corpo- fonds 200, CTA. rate capitalism and their relations to one another, a picture of 15 “Assessment Rolls,” 1920; and Harris, Unplanned Suburbs, 295. neighbourhood change begins to emerge. Jarvis Street shows 16 Lowe, Women in the Administrative Revolution, 48. how the transformation of local spaces is situated within the nexus of class, societal, housing, and economic changes. By 17 See Gunter Gad and Deryk Holdsworth, “Building for City, Region, and Nation,” in Forging a Consensus, ed. Victor Russel, 272–319 (Toronto: understanding how the neighbourhood functions, it is possible Press, 1984), for a thorough discussion of the develop- to understand how it changes, by examining the economic and ment of Toronto’s central business district. corresponding social frameworks that structure how practices 18 This can be seen quite clearly by tracing names for each year under study in are manifested at the local, urban, and regional levels. the Might’s City Directory.

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19 “Assessment Rolls, Toronto, St. James’, and St. Thomas’ Wards,” 1884, files 46 Groth, Living Downtown, 29. 342 and 349, series 612, fonds 200, CTA; and “Assessment Rolls,” 1920. 47 Wright, Building the Dream, 136 –7. 20 Might’s Toronto City Directory (Toronto: Might’s Directories, 1921). 48 “Advertisement,” Globe, 27 May 1911. 21 James Careless, Toronto to 1918 (Toronto: James Lorimer, 1990), 109. 49 “A Tenement Policy Not Wanted,” Globe, 22 June 1918. 22 Ibid., 203. 50 Richard Dennis, Toronto’s First Apartment House Boom: An Historical 23 See Michael J. Piva, The Condition of the Working Class in Toronto: 1900–1921 Geography, 1900–1920 (Toronto: Centre for Urban and Community Studies, (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1979), for an in-depth study of industrial 1989), 30. labour and lifestyle during this period. 51 See Raphael Fischler, “Development Controls in Toronto in the Nineteenth 24 Lowe, Women in the Administrative Revolution, 27. Century,” Urban History Review 36 (2007): 16–31, for more on Toronto’s zon- ing and bylaws. 25 See Gad and Holdsworth, “Building for City, Region, and Nation,” 272–319. 52 “Report of the Medical Officer of Health on Housing,” 1918, file 2, fonds 1018, 26 Ibid., 291. CTA. 27 “Assessment Rolls, Toronto, Wards 2 and 3,” 1911, files 793–7, series 612, 53 Harris, Unplanned Suburbs. fonds 200, CTA. 54 “Assessments,” 1911, 1920. 28 James Lemon, Toronto since 1918: An Illustrated History (Toronto: James Lorimer, 1985), 38–40. 55 Ibid. 29 Might’s Toronto City Directory (Toronto: Might’s Directories, 1911). 56 Careless, Toronto to 1918, 202.

30 Gad and Holdsworth, “Building for City, Region, and Nation,” 285. 57 Census of Population, Canada 1881, 1891, and 1911. 31 James Lemon, “Toronto among North American Cities,” in Forging a 58 Lowe, Women in the Administrative Revolution, 49. Consensus (Toronto: University of Toronto Press), 329. 59 Morris Altman and Louis Lamontagne, “Gender Pay Inequality and 32 See Peter Goheen, Victorian Toronto, 1850–1900: Patterns and Process of Occupational Change in Canada, 1900–1930,” Journal of Socio-Economics Growth (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), for an expansive study 25 (1996): 287. of Toronto’s spatial and population growth through the early industrial period. 60 See Joanne Meyerowitz, Women Adrift: Independent Wage Earners in 33 Might’s, 1911. Chicago, 1880–1930 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), for an in-depth look at unattached, young women in the corporate city. 34 For a more detailed understanding of the link between residential mobility and these larger urban changes, see Michael J. Doucet, Nineteenth-Century 61 See Richard Dennis, “Working Women Downtown: Single Women in Toronto, Residential Mobility: Some Preliminary Comments (Toronto: York University 1900–1930,” London Journal of Canadian Studies 22 (2007): 35–57, for an Press, 1972). excellent breakdown of the history of single women in Toronto during the industrial age. In particular, Dennis ties these women’s residential choices in 35 Richard Dennis, “Private Landlords and Redevelopment: The Ward in Toronto, purpose-built apartments to increasing personal and financial freedom. 1890–1920,” Urban History Review 24 (1995): 27–8. 62 Census, 1911. 36 Gwendolyn Wright, Building the Dream (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1981), 138. 63 Might’s, 1911. 37 See Michael Doucet and John Weaver, Housing the North American City 64 See Mark Peel, “On the Margins: Lodgers and Boarders in Boston, 1860– (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1991), for an 1900,” Journal of American History 72 (1986): 813–34. in-depth understanding of residential rental economies in Canadian cities 65 Clark, Of Toronto the Good, 137. during this period. 66 “Report of the Medical Officer of Health on Housing,” 1918, file 2, fonds 1018, 38 “Assessment Rolls,” 1893; and “Assessment Rolls,” 1920. CTA. 39 See Paul Groth, Living Downtown: The History of Residential Hotels in the 67 Careless, Toronto to 1918, 122. United States (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), for a detailed look at the rise of centre-city boarding, lodging, and residential hotels. 68 Meyerowitz, Women Adrift, 70. 40 Careless, Toronto to 1918, 149–56; and Doucet and Weaver, Housing the 69 “Advertisement,” Globe, 3 March 1915. North American City, 77–126. 70 “Advertisement,” Globe, 19 June 1917. 41 See John Modell and Tamara Hareven, “Urbanization and the Malleable 71 Richard Dennis, “‘Zoning’ before Zoning: The Regulation of Apartment Household: An Examination of Boarding and Lodging in American Families,” Housing in Early Twentieth Century Winnipeg and Toronto,” Planning Journal of Marriage and the Family 35 (1973): 467–79, for one of the most Perspectives 15 (2000): 267–99, outlines the ways in which areas such as in-depth examinations of lodging and the family economy. Jarvis Street were “zoned” as apartment areas, even as those building types 42 Richard Harris, “The End Justified the Means: Boarding and Rooming in a were blocked in more middle-class areas of Toronto. City of Homes,” Journal of Social History 26 (1992): 331–58. 72 “Minutes of City Council,” 1011, series 1078, fonds 200, CTA. 43 Ibid., 334–9. 73 Ibid. 44 Richard Harris, “The Flexible House: The Housing Backlog and the 74 “Report of the Medical Officer.” Persistence of Lodging, 1891–1951,” Social Science History 18 (1994): 49. 75 “Womanhood in Uniform,” Globe, 20 January 1910. 45 C. S. Clark, Of Toronto the Good: A Social Study (Montreal: Toronto Publishing, 189 8), 67.

19 Urban History Review / Revue d’histoire urbaine Vol. XLiiI, No. 1 (Fall 2014 automne)